Monday, January 14, 2008 at 1:01am
Thoughts on a birthday
Column: Interesting Times
"I was cast upon thee from the womb" (Psalm 22:10).
The wind swept off Lake Michigan, down the narrow street toward the Miracle Mile past the medical center where, on a January day in the last year of the Great Depression, a new citizen was added to the U.S., 129,800,942 population. The Chicago Tribune newspaper picture tells the story. At the front left of the fading black and white photo stands a man in a heavy wool double-breasted business suit and behind him a younger man, also in a suit and tie. To the right of the photo, behind a glass window, is a woman, a nurse, wrapped in white cotton, wearing a surgical mask; only her eyes can be seen. She is holding a baby, wrapped in white flannel, only a small part of the face visible. The older man is my grandfather, Dr. Herman N. Bundesen, the younger his middle son, Russell, my father. The nurse's name is lost to time. I am the baby.
The story is that Dr. Bundesen was, at the time of my birth, commissioner of health for Chicago and Cook County, Illinois, the czar of hospitals, doctors, nurses, food inspection and all health-related issues for the second-largest city in the United States. Dr. Bundesen was also the national best-selling author of millions of books on children's health, on diet and nutrition. Three years before this picture he had run for governor of Illinois, defeated by votes from downstate where farmers, still reeling from the doctor's edict that all tubercular cows be killed to halt the spread of the disease, rejected his candidacy. For over 20 years he had been front-page news, from halting the influenza epidemic of 1918 in Chicago, to his days as coroner during the St. Valentine's Day massacre, to his presidency of the American Health Association. He was a high priest in a time when medicine was emerging as the national church, and his presence at my birth was considered baptism enough. As if to punctuate the modernity of his American achievement as a Danish immigrant child traveling to the Promised Land from Berlin at the end of the previous century, with primogeniture still the unwritten law of the land, with a male grandchild already named Herman III, I was given no previous family name, no middle name, no saint's name, but called simply Lynne. The child, as yet unformed, had no idea that with family influences from the 1800s she would be required to navigate the 21st century.
The picture indicates that in the era of my birth, even at the end of the Depression, in the racial, social and economic class to which I was born, fathers and relatives were kept away from the baby until they left the hospital. Mothers, who almost without exception were homemakers, were brought their babies to nurse, and the babies were then returned to the communal nursery of newborns. Hospital babies bonded early with the female nurses and lived most hours that first week with their peers. Black babies and mothers in Chicago bonded early. Dr. Bundesen had implemented a medical in-home service for black women giving birth with follow-up health care for the mother and child. These are things that I, born that January day, did not know until 20 years later when I had my first child. But I knew from first remembrance the great American sin of racism.
The Great Migration of Negroes from the South from had brought hundreds of thousands to Chicago, and among them was Gwendolyn Ewing, who would be waiting at my parents' second-floor apartment on Crandon Street just a street away from my grandparents' home at 7410 Ogelsby in what is called the South Shore. Gwendolyn, also the name of my mother, was my caretaker, my early teacher who took me with her to church, where there was music, singing, enthusiasm and where I would be the only white-skinned member. My loyalties lay with her and her people throughout my life. I was as comfortable with her as I am with the enthusiasm and passion of Barack Obama. As a woman who is still navigating the shoals of equal rights for women in an era of space exploration and war, I understand the drive and passion of Hilary Clinton.
Now there are 300 million people in the United States. I cannot be the only one with conflicted loyalties.
— — —
Lynne Bundesen is the author of five books on religion and was adjunct professor at the Boston Theological Institute under a Templeton Science and Religion Grant. She is currently the spiritual expert for the physical and spiritual health website of Dr. Andrew Weil. Her book "The Feminine Spirit: Recapturing the Heart of Scripture" was just published. Her email address is {email lynnebundesen@hotmail.com}lynnebundesen@hotmail.com{/email}. © Copyright 2008 by Lynne Bundesen.
The wind swept off Lake Michigan, down the narrow street toward the Miracle Mile past the medical center where, on a January day in the last year of the Great Depression, a new citizen was added to the U.S., 129,800,942 population. The Chicago Tribune newspaper picture tells the story. At the front left of the fading black and white photo stands a man in a heavy wool double-breasted business suit and behind him a younger man, also in a suit and tie. To the right of the photo, behind a glass window, is a woman, a nurse, wrapped in white cotton, wearing a surgical mask; only her eyes can be seen. She is holding a baby, wrapped in white flannel, only a small part of the face visible. The older man is my grandfather, Dr. Herman N. Bundesen, the younger his middle son, Russell, my father. The nurse's name is lost to time. I am the baby.
The story is that Dr. Bundesen was, at the time of my birth, commissioner of health for Chicago and Cook County, Illinois, the czar of hospitals, doctors, nurses, food inspection and all health-related issues for the second-largest city in the United States. Dr. Bundesen was also the national best-selling author of millions of books on children's health, on diet and nutrition. Three years before this picture he had run for governor of Illinois, defeated by votes from downstate where farmers, still reeling from the doctor's edict that all tubercular cows be killed to halt the spread of the disease, rejected his candidacy. For over 20 years he had been front-page news, from halting the influenza epidemic of 1918 in Chicago, to his days as coroner during the St. Valentine's Day massacre, to his presidency of the American Health Association. He was a high priest in a time when medicine was emerging as the national church, and his presence at my birth was considered baptism enough. As if to punctuate the modernity of his American achievement as a Danish immigrant child traveling to the Promised Land from Berlin at the end of the previous century, with primogeniture still the unwritten law of the land, with a male grandchild already named Herman III, I was given no previous family name, no middle name, no saint's name, but called simply Lynne. The child, as yet unformed, had no idea that with family influences from the 1800s she would be required to navigate the 21st century.
The picture indicates that in the era of my birth, even at the end of the Depression, in the racial, social and economic class to which I was born, fathers and relatives were kept away from the baby until they left the hospital. Mothers, who almost without exception were homemakers, were brought their babies to nurse, and the babies were then returned to the communal nursery of newborns. Hospital babies bonded early with the female nurses and lived most hours that first week with their peers. Black babies and mothers in Chicago bonded early. Dr. Bundesen had implemented a medical in-home service for black women giving birth with follow-up health care for the mother and child. These are things that I, born that January day, did not know until 20 years later when I had my first child. But I knew from first remembrance the great American sin of racism.
The Great Migration of Negroes from the South from had brought hundreds of thousands to Chicago, and among them was Gwendolyn Ewing, who would be waiting at my parents' second-floor apartment on Crandon Street just a street away from my grandparents' home at 7410 Ogelsby in what is called the South Shore. Gwendolyn, also the name of my mother, was my caretaker, my early teacher who took me with her to church, where there was music, singing, enthusiasm and where I would be the only white-skinned member. My loyalties lay with her and her people throughout my life. I was as comfortable with her as I am with the enthusiasm and passion of Barack Obama. As a woman who is still navigating the shoals of equal rights for women in an era of space exploration and war, I understand the drive and passion of Hilary Clinton.
Now there are 300 million people in the United States. I cannot be the only one with conflicted loyalties.
— — —
Lynne Bundesen is the author of five books on religion and was adjunct professor at the Boston Theological Institute under a Templeton Science and Religion Grant. She is currently the spiritual expert for the physical and spiritual health website of Dr. Andrew Weil. Her book "The Feminine Spirit: Recapturing the Heart of Scripture" was just published. Her email address is {email lynnebundesen@hotmail.com}lynnebundesen@hotmail.com{/email}. © Copyright 2008 by Lynne Bundesen.